Today we are starting a Phorecast Session for UNICEF to create new concepts for fundraising. UNICEF is well known not just only for doing great and important work for children all around the world, but for their drive to be in the forefront of how to gather resources for this work. So when UNICEF asked if Phorecast could help them with ideation around new concepts for fundraising we knew this was going to be a a good one.

As usual when we do Phorecast Sessions we first head hunt for the best talent for the challenge and divide the up in teams that then start a three day creative process (innovation war games) to create innovative solutions.

Here are the teams that will bring fundraising to the next level:

Red Team

Deborah Lygonis
She now works with luxury chocolate as the executive chairperson at Emanuel Andrén Gastronomy AB, but her entrepreneurial skills includes both 3D-graphics and mobile games. She is also a business consultant at Great Clarity and a jury member of Venture Cup, the world’s largest business plan competition.

Johan Johansson
Now works as brand consultant at Xlent Strategy and has a background as Creative Director both at Fivestarday and Futurelabs where he ran the yearly event Future Design Days for ten years.

Emma Lindahl
Holding a PhD in biochemistry and worked at Karolinska Institutet, recently studied UX-design at Hyper Island. Now she works as a Visual Designer at the agency Ocean Observations.

Green Team

Robert Dysell
Experienced planner whose focus is on developing the creative process so that it solves the right problem in the right way – not least in the digital world. He holds a master degree in social sciences, speaks Spanish and likes to surf. In charge of Research and Development at Acne and founder of Planner Fed a network for account planners.

Feffe Kaufmann
Born in Brazil, childhood in Stockholm, former snowboarder. Today he works at the agency The Amazing Society, building online communities using sociala media, and the connections between physical and online meetings.

Blue team

Martin Nordin
Senior Art Director at IKEA, with a background from major advertising agencies such as GREY. Long experience from concept development, digital interaction and retail marketing.

Kristina Landerström
Expert in professional event management, sponsorships and meeting formats. Organiser of the large yearly event Microsoft TechDays. Project and meeting manager at her company Metamorphos.

Johan Lindskog
Journalist, photographer and creative director. Founder of the Bon magazine and editor of several magazines such as Plaza, Res and Habit. Today he runs the idea agency EGG with clients such as Berns, Fotografiska, Niklas Ekstedt, Veckans Affärer, KRO, Icon.

At Phorecast we need to experiment with all the new stuff going on to understand the mechanics of new types of business models. This is why we now have Juicy Clouds in AppStore. Since Phorecast will continue to focus on ideation and innovative concept development we are now part of a game studio venture called Swecial

Juicy Clouds is our way of researching freemium first hand. We encounter many organisations and consultants that talk a big game when it come to do stuff for free to get revenues later, but the only industry that’s really proven that it can be a sustainable business model is the gaming industry.

Our innovation director Tomas Seo who has been extremely hands on in making this game more than just a clone of titles like Candy Crush and Jelly Splash says that he is enormously proud of the game. “It’s a cleaner design, and a better flow than the other casual games out there. In my own opinion as its father of cause. And it is more than just the App since we are hiding secret levels around the Internet for people to collect” he says and smiles.

A lot of our clients need app development (ios and android mostly) after the ideation process is complete so this is our very public way of proving that we do deliver apps. Juicy Clouds is currently number 72 on the Swedish AppStore puzzle game chart.

It’s day two of the Phorecast Session Work Life in 2022 and by now our teams have had the chance to present them self to each other, it’s part of our process that they haven’t met before, so it’s about time we present them properly.

TEAM 1

Kerstin Bergh
Vice-chairman Civilekonomerna (The Swedish Association of Graduates in Business Administration and Economics). She has a background from the Sahlén shipowning company, currently managing the internal economy department Master Data at the Nordea bank.

Alexander Culafic
Creative Director, Kollektivet Livet. Jack-of-all-trades, working with advertising, digital projects and events. Also engaged in summer camps for the handicapped and adolescents with social problems.

Jonas Hurtigh Grabe
Business- and office concept developer at the real estate company Diligentia, working with construction projects and office solutions in their Future Lab. In the past Jonas has been an entrepreneur in the housing sector and he has also worked in IT and advertising.

TEAM 2

Björn Ekblom
Formerly industrial engineer at Unisource, currently at Eltel Networks Infranet, working full time for Unionen, the biggest Swedish private sector trade union, where he works primarily with labour legislation.

Lennart Eng
Illustrator, artist, graphic designer and teacher. Chairman of Svenska Tecknare, (The Association of Swedish illustrators and Grapic designers), member of the boards of Sveriges Författarfond (fund for book authors) and Svenska Barnboksinstitutet (The Swedish Institure for Children’s Books).

Anna Lundbergh
Senior Business Analyst at Skånetrafiken (regional public transport body). She has previously worked with analysis, strategy and e-government as Strategic Development Officer in Government agencies, at the OECD and for the research and consulting firm Kairos Future.

TEAM 3

Daniel Byström
Industrial designer with his own studio Design Nation. He teaches design and strategy at Jönköpings Tekniska Högskola (Jönköping School of Engineering) Daniel was involved in the CityMove, a project investigating how to move a the city Gällivare in the north of Sweden.

Lars Lundqvist
Former archaeologist, department manager at Riksantikvarieämbetet (The Swedish National Heritage Board) with a focus on developing user friendly e-services and social media as tools for accessing cultural heritage information.

Eva Ribbenhall
Master in Business Economics, with a background in excecutive management positions at IKEA, various companies in the media sector and at the corporate health care company Previa. She also has experience from recruitment o executive level managers and specialists. Currently consultant, interim manager for organisations in need of change.

When we headhunt participants for our think tank teams, we search both for individual expertise and a way to mix people with really different backgrounds and characters into effective teams. We are convinced that interesting combinations of people enable interesting solutions. If you want to be considered as a Phorecast Session participant you can read more about our recruiting process and apply here

Yesterday we started a new Phorecast Session (our framework for result-oriented think tanks). This time the end result will be scenarios of work life in Sweden in the year 2022. Our clients Almega, Saco and Unionen will then use these scenarios as a base for their future strategies.

The first day started with our clients presenting their views on the the challenge and giving some inspirational words of wisdom to the three teams of experts. Among the things our clients pointed out was that the traditional product industry will transition into the biggest new player in the service industry. They also wanted our teams to spend the next days thinking about questions like:

How will the reward system evolve from money to other things during the next ten years?

This April we will realize our next Phorecast Session. The theme is Work 2022, and the result will be scenarios on what Swedish work life will look like in the year 2022 and how labor organizations and unions can support the future workers and employers.

This is a joint project between:

Almega – Employer- and trade organization for the Swedish service sector

Saco – The Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations is a trade union confederation of 23 affiliated associations which together have over 600 000 members

Unionen – Sweden’s largest trade union in the private labour market and the largest white-collar union in the world

Right now we are looking for experts in scenario creation with different backgrounds so if you think this is a Phorecast Session you would like to apply for please email work2022@phorecast.com

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Phorecast Podcast No 13 - The newspaper industry may be in turmoil but long live investigative reporting! [21:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8084)

On this installment of the Phorecast podcast we meet Mr Richard Tofel, the general manager of ProPublica.org. Pro Publica is a non profit newsroom with one goal: to produce great investigative reporting.

Today, there is no escaping the headlines that newspapers are dying, advertising revenue has dried up and venerable newspapers are scrambling, downsizing or going web-only. Investigative journalism is expensive and often the first to go when times are tough. There is a flurry of discussion about new business models to save the industry be it micropayments or philanthropic ventures like ProPublica.org.

Pro Publica is funded by grants and works like this; the newsroom has a staff of around 30 top investigative reporters, they produce reporting and it is then given, not sold, to news outlets such as the New York Times, the LA Times, CNN and CBS 60 minutes. All the reporting is also available for free on the ProPublica.org site.

Wars and natural disasters are just a few of the reasons why people, for generations, have had to relocate from their homes all over the globe. In the Northern part of Sweden the mining industry has continued to expand and an unfortunate side effect has presented itself in several cities, the ground is crumbling. The beautiful town of Gellivare is one of those cities.

City Move Interdesign is a unique global event designed to tackle this pressing issue. The project is a partnership between ICSID, the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and the community of Gellivare and it will begin to tackle the enormous challenges that moving an entire population entails for both the inhabitants and for the city itself.

Phorecast founder Tomas Seo has been handpicked to join forty international experts and innovators for this multi-disciplinary project. During a two week think tank, innovators from a vast spread of competencies, will work together towards solving issues such as how to address the needs of people when relocating from their homes, physical conditions when planning a new society, sustainable factors for a new society and much more.

The findings from the City Move Interdesign project will become part of a knowledge bank that can be used in Sweden but also serve as groundwork internationally, for example when relocating populations ravished by political unrest and natural disasters.

International architects, psychologists, artists, engineers are just some of the disciplines joining together in this effort. Designer Tomas Seo has through much of his career worked in multi-disciplinary projects and is a strong believer in this method of collaboration. He is looking forward to contributing to this knowledge bank that will hopefully be of service to both Gellivare, other cites in Sweden and the international community.

Play Now:

Phorecast is honored for the opportunity to interview Mr Randall Fielding. Mr Fielding is a world renowned architect and educator who has developed award winning schools all over the world. Randall is the co-founder of Fielding Nair International based in Minneapolis, one of the world’s most innovative educational design companies.

Mr Fielding has worked with schools in Minneapolis, Kazakhstan, Australia and Switzerland, to name just a few places, and his focus is on creative and interactive 21st century learning spaces. In this interview we talk to Mr Fielding about what the problems are with todays school system and environment and how we can engage and create innovative schools to prepare kids for the new requirements of the knowledge age. And we find out how Prince has been an interesting inspiration in this field!

Radiolab has been called the most innovative show on radio by This American Life’s Ira Glass and very many listeners agree. Each week co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich choose a big topic of a scientific and philosophical nature and in a unique documentary style explore it through interviews, experiments and discussion. Jad, a music composer, adds a distinctive audio production style with sound illustrations and unique editing techniques.

We are honored to interview Jad Abumrad about the coming season of Radiolab, some behind the scenes of the shows production, the most difficult topics they have ever tackled and how pop culture portrays science and scientists today!

Tomas served as chairman of the association between 2005-2008. The Swedish Association of Designers (Sveriges Designer) is a trade organization for professional designers based in Sweden. During his years as chairman membership grew substantially and his contributions include working for multi-disciplinary thinking among designers and seeing new business opportunities in openness and cooperations.

Tomas is in excellent company, other Honorary Lifetime Members of The Swedish Association of Designers include Margareta van den Bosch, chief designer at H&M and Henrik Otto, senior Vice President of Global Design, Electrolux!